by Ludo Martens
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Trotsky, On the Eve of the Seventeenth Congress (20 January 1934). Writings, vol. 6, pp. 223-224.
Capitalist restoration is impossible
In the beginning of 1935, Trotsky's position was the following: the restoration of capitalism in the USSR is impossible; the economic and political base of the Soviet rйgime is safe, but the summit, i.e. the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, is the most corrupt, the most anti-democratic and the most reactionary part of society.
Hence, Trotsky took under his wing all the anti-Communist forces that were struggling `against the most corrupt part' of the Bolshevik Party. Within the Party, Trotsky systematically defended opportunists, careerists and defeatists whose actions undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Here is what Trotsky wrote at the end of 1934, just after Kirov's assassination, just after Zinoviev and Kamenev were excluded from the Party and sentenced to internal exile.
`(H)ow could it come to pass that at a time like this, after all the economic successes, after the ``abolition'' --- according to official assurances --- of classes in the USSR and the ``construction'' of the socialist society, how could it come to pass that Old Bolsheviks ... could have posed for their task the restoration of capitalism
`Only utter imbeciles would be capable of thinking that capitalist relations, that is to say, the private ownership of the means of production, including the land, can be reestablished in the USSR by peaceful methods and lead to the rйgime of bourgeois democracy. As a matter of fact, even if it were possible in general, capitalism could not be regenerated in Russia except as the result of a savage counterrevolutionary coup d'etat that would cost ten times as many victims as the October Revolution and the civil war.'
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Trotsky, The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Kirov Assassination: A Reply to Friends in America (28 December 1934). Writings, vol. 7, p. 116.
This passage leads one to think. Trotsky led a relentless struggle from 1922 to 1927 within the leadership of the Party, claiming that it was impossible to build socialism in one country, the Soviet Union. But, this unscrupulous individual declared in 1934 that socialism was so solidly established in the Soviet Union that overthrowing it would claim tens of millions of lives!
Then, Trotsky claimed to defend the `Old Bolsheviks'. But the `Old Bolsheviks' Zinoviev and Kamenev were diametrically opposed to the `Old Bolsheviks' Stalin, Kirov, Molotov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov. The latter showed that in the bitter class struggle taking place in the Soviet Union, the opportunist positions of Zinoviev and Kamenev opened up the way for the old exploiting classes and for the new bureaucrats.
Trotsky used the age-old bourgeois argument: `he is an old revolutionary, how could he have changed sides?' Khrushchev would take up this slogan in his Secret Report.
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Nikita S. Khrushchev. The Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Secret Report). The New Leader (New York), 1957, p. S32.
However, Kautsky, once hailed as the spiritual child of Marx and Engels, became, after the death of the founders of scientific socialism, the main Marxist renegade. Martov was one of the Marxist pioneers in Russia and participated in the creation of the first revolutionary organizations; nevertheless, he became a Menshevik leader and fought against socialist revolution right from October 1917. And what about the `Old Bolsheviks' Khrushchev and Mikoyan, who effectively set the Soviet Union on the path of capitalist restoration.
Trotsky claimed that counter-revolution was impossible without a bloodbath that would cost tens of million lives. He pretended that capitalism could not be retored `from inside', by the internal political degeneration of the Party, by enemy infiltration, by bureaucratization, by the social-democratization of the Party. However, Lenin insisted on this possibility.
Politically, Kamenev and Zinoviev were precursors of Khrushchev. Nevertheless, to ridicule the vigilance against opportunists such as Kamenev, Trotsky used an argument that would be taken up, almost word for word, by Khrushchev in his `Secret Report':
`(The) ``liquidation'' (of the former ruling classes) concurrently with the economic successes of the new society must necessarily lead to the mitigation and the withering away of the dictatorship'.
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Trotsky, The Stalinist Bureaucracy and the Kirov Assassination, p. 117.
Just as a clandestine organization succeeded in killing the number two of the socialist rйgime, Trotsky declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat should logically begin to disappear. At the same time that he was pointing a dagger at the heart of the Bolsheviks who were defending the Soviet rйgime, Trotsky was calling for leniency toward the plotters.
In the same essay, Trotsky painted the terrorists in a favorable light. Trotsky declared that Kirov's assassination was `a new fact that must be considered of great symptomatic importance'. He explained:
`(A) terrorist act prepared beforehand and committed by order of a definite organization is ... inconceivable unless there exists a political atmosphere favorable to it. The hostility to the leaders in power must have been widespread and must have assumed the sharpest forms for a terrorist group to crystallize out within the ranks of the party youth ....
`If ... discontent is spreading within the masses of the people ... which isolated the bureaucracy as a whole; if the youth itself feels that it is spurned, oppressed and deprived of the chance for independent development, the atmosphere for terroristic groupings is created.'
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Ibid. , pp. 121--122.
Trotsky, while keeping a public distance from individual terrorism, said all he could in favor of Kirov's assassination! You see, the plot and the assassination were proof of a `general atmosphere of hostility that isolated the entire bureaucracy'. Kirov's assassination proved that `the youth feels oppressed and deprived of the chance for independent development' --- this last remark was a direct encouragement for the reactionary youth, who did in fact feel `oppressed' and `deprived of the chance for independent development'.
In support of terror and insurrection
Trotsky finished by calling for individual terrorism and armed insurrection to destroy the `Stalinist' power. Hence, as early as 1935, Trotsky acted as an open counter-revolutionary, as an irreconcilable anti-Communist. Here is a portion of a 1935 text, which he wrote one and a half years before the Great Purge of 1937.
`Stalin ... is the living incarnation of a bureaucratic Thermidor. In his hands, the terror has been and still remains an instrument designed to crush the Party, the unions and the Soviets, and to establish a personal dictatorship that only lacks the imperial crown ....
`The insane atrocities provoked by the bureaucratic collectivization methods, or the cowardly reprisals against the best elements of the proletarian vanguard, have inevitably provoked exasperation, hatred and a spirit of vengeance. This atmosphere generates a readiness among the youth to commit individual acts of terror ....
`Only the successes of the world proletariat can revive the Soviet proletariat's belief in itself. The essential condition of the revolution's victory is the unification of the international revolutionary vanguard under the flag of the Fourth International. The struggle for this banner must be conducted in the Soviet Union, with prudence but without compromise .... The proletariat that made three revolutions will lift up its head one more time. The bureaucratic absurdity will try to resist? The proletariat will find a big enough broom. And we will help it.'
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Leon Trotsky, Pour sa propre sauvegarde, la bureaucratie entretient la terreur (26 September 1935). L'appareil policier du stalinisme (Paris: Union gйnйrale d'йditions, 1976), pp. 85--87.
Hence, Trotsky discretely encouraged `individual terror' and openly called for `a fourth revolution'.
In this text, Trotsky claimed that Stalin `crushed' the Bolshevik Party, the unions and the Soviets. Such an `atrocious' counter-revolution, declared Trotsky, would necessarily provoke hatred among the you
th, a spirit of vengeance and terrorism. This was a thinly veiled call for the assassination of Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders. Trotsky declared that the activity of his acolytes in the Soviet Union had to follow the strictest rules of a conspiracy; it was clear that he would not directly call for individual terror. But he made it clear that such individual terror would `inevitably' be provoked by the Stalinist crimes. For conspiratorial language, difficult to be clearer.
If there were any doubt among his followers that they had to follow the armed path, Trotsky added: in Russia, we led an armed revolution in 1905, another one in February 1917 and a third one in October 1917. We are now preparing a fourth revolution against the `Stalinists'. If they should dare resist, we will treat them as we treated the Tsarists and the bourgeois in 1905 and 1917. By calling for an armed revolution in the Soviet Union, Trotsky became the spokesperson for all the defeated reactionary classes, from the kulaks, who had suffered such `senseless atrocities' at the hands of the `bureaucrats' during the collectivization, to the Tsarists, including the bourgeois and the White officers! To drag some workers into his anti-Communist enterprise, Trotsky promised them `the success of the world proletariat' that would `give back the confidence to the Soviet proletariat'.
After reading these texts, it is clear that any Soviet Communist who learned of clandestine links between Trotsky and existing members of the Party would have to immediately denounce those members to the state security. All those who maintained clandestine relations with Trotsky were part of a counter-revolutionary plot aiming to destroy the very foundations of Soviet power, notwithstanding the `leftist' arguments they used to justify their anti-Communist subversion.
The Zinoviev--Kamenev--Smirnov counter-revolutionary group
Let us come back to the discovery, in 1936, of links between Zinoviev--Kamenev--Smirnov and Trotsky's anti-Communist group outside the country.
The trial of the Zinovievites took place in August 1936. It essentially dealt with elements that had been marginal in the Party for several years. The repression against Trotskyists and Zinovievites left the Party structures intact. During the trial, the accused referred to Bukharin. But the prosecutor felt that there was not sufficient proof implicating Bukharin and did not pursue investigations in this direction, i.e. towards the leading cadre circles of the Party.
Nevertheless, the radical tendency within the Party leadership published in July 1936 an internal letter that focused on the fact that enemies had penetrated the Party apparatus itself, that they were hiding their real intentions and that their were noisily showing their support for the general line in order to better sabotage. It was very difficult to unmask them, the letter noted.
The July letter also contained this affirmation: `Under present conditions, the inalienable quality of every Bolshevik must be the ability to detect the enemy of the party, however well he may be masked'.
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Getty, op. cit. , p. 123.
This sentence may appear to some as a summary of `Stalinist' paranoia. They should carefully read the admission of Tokaev, a member of an anti-Communist organization within the CPSU. Tokaev described his reaction to Zinoviev during a Party assembly at the Zhukovsky Military Academy, where he occupied an important position.
`In this atmosphere, there was only one thing for me to do: go with the tide .... I concentrated on Zinoviev and Kameniev. I avoided all mention of Bukharin. But the chairman would not let this pass: did I or did I not approve of the conclusions Vishinsky had drawn in regard to Bukharin? ....
`I said that Vishinsky's decision to investigate the activity of Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and Uglanov had the approval of the people and the Party, and that I `completely agreed' --- that the `peoples of the Soviet Union and our Party had the right to know about the two-faced intrigues of Bukharin and Rykov ....
`(F)rom this statement alone my other readers will grasp in what a turgid atmosphere, in what an ultra-conspiratorial manner --- not even knowing one another's characters --- we oppositionists of the U.S.S.R. have to work.'
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Tokaev, op. cit. , pp. 60--61.
It is therefore clear that at the time of the trial of the Trotskyist--Zinovievite Bloc, Stalin did not support the radical tendency and kept his faith in the head of the NKVD, Yagoda. The latter was able to orient the trial and significantly restricted the scope of the purge that took place after the discovery of the plot.
However, there was already doubt about Yagoda. Several people, including Van Heijenoort, Trotsky's secretary, and Orlov, an NKVD turncoat, have since affirmed that Mark Zborowsky, Sedov's closest collaborator, worked for the Soviet secret services.
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Getty, op. cit. , pp. 121--122.
Under these conditions, could Yagoda really have known nothing about the existence of the Trotsky--Zinoviev bloc until 1936? Or did he hide it? Some within the Party were already asking this question. For this reason, in the beginning of 1936, Yezhov, a member of the radical tendency, was named Yagoda's second.
The trial of Pyatakov and the Trotskyists
On September 23, 1936 a wave of explosions hit the Siberian mines, the second in nine months. There were 12 dead. Three days later, Yagoda became Commissar of Communications and Yezhov chief of the NKVD. At least until that time, Stalin had sustained the more or less liberal policies of Yagoda.
Investigations in Siberia led to the arrest of Pyatakov, an old Trotskyist, assistant to Ordzhonikidze, Commissar of Heavy Industry since 1932. Close to Stalin, Ordzhonikidze had followed a policy of using and re-educating bourgeois specialists. Hence, in February 1936, he had amnestied nine `bourgeois engineers', condemned in 1930 during an major trial on sabotage.
On the question of industry, there had been for several years debates and divisions within the Party. Radicals, led by Molotov, opposed most of the bourgeois specialists, in whom they had little political trust. They had long called for a purge. Ordzhonikidze, on the other hand, said that they were needed and that their specialties had to be used.
This recurring debate about old specialists with a suspect past resurfaced with the sabotage in the Siberian mines. Inquiries revealed that Pyatakov, Ordzhonikidze's assistant, had widely used bourgeois specialists to sabotage the mines.
In January 1937, the trial of Pyatakov, Radek and other old Trotskyists was held; they admitted their clandestine activities. For Ordzhonikidze, the blow was so hard that he committed suicide.
Of course, several bourgeois authors have claimed that the accusations of systematic sabotage were completely invented, that these were frameups whose sole rфle was to eliminate political opponents. But there was a U.S. engineer who worked between 1928 and 1937 as a leading cadre in the mines of Ural and Siberia, many of which had been sabotaged. The testimony of this apolitical technician John Littlepage is interesting on many counts.
Littlepage described how, as soon as he arrived in the Soviet mines in 1928, he became aware of the scope of industrial sabotage, the method of struggle preferred by enemies of the Soviet rйgime. There was therefore a large base fighting against the Bolshevik leadership, and if some well-placed Party cadres were encouraging or simply protecting the saboteurs, they could seriously weaken the rйgime. Here is Littlepage's description.
`One day in 1928 I went into a power-station at the Kochbar gold-mines. I just happened to drop my hand on one of the main bearings of a large Diesel engine as I walked by, and felt something gritty in the oil. I had the engine stopped immediately, and we removed from the oil reservoir about two pints of quartz sand, which could have been placed there only by design. On several other occasions in the new milling plants at Kochkar we found sand inside such equipment as speed-reducers, which are entirely enclosed, and can be reached only by removing the hand-hold covers.
`Such petty industrial sabotage was --- and still is --- so common in all branches of Soviet industry that Russian engineers can do little about it, and were surprised at my own concern when I first encountered it ....
`Wh
y, I have been asked, is sabotage of this description so common in Soviet Russia, and so rare in most other countries? Do Russians have a peculiar bent for industrial wrecking?
`People who ask such questions apparently haven't realized that the authorities in Russia have been --- and still are --- fighting a whole series of open or disguised civil wars. In the beginning they fought and dispossessed the aristocracy, the bankers and landowners and merchants of the Tsarist rйgime .... they later fought and dispossessed the little independent farmers and the little retail merchants and the nomad herders in Asia.
`Of course it's all for their own good, say the Communists. But many of these people can't see things that way, and remain bitter enemies of the Communists and their ideas, even after they have been put back to work in State industries. From these groups have come a considerable number of disgruntled workers who dislike Communists so much that they would gladly damage any of their enterprises if they could.'
